Embryon Truths
by BlackLadyCharon
Summary: Harry Potter Digital Devil Saga Xover  Sometimes, one needs to illuminate the path with a forgotten God and Lost Souls to bring back the truth... Shonenai, HarryXDracoX?, RonXHermione.
1. Chapter 1

Author's notes: This is a new one, yet another obscure crossover. The games this is crossed into are called Shin Megami Tensei Digital Saga 1 & 2. Yet another one I do for my own pleasure, though it may be confusing for those who haven't played the games with their rather twisted and complicated storylines that help form the backstory here. Still, I hope people will enjoy it. This is an AU starting in the 5th year.

Kalliope the Mewthree: Authoress-Mama doesn't own Harry Potter or Digital Devil Saga, they belong to J.K. Rowling and Atlus respectively. Authoress-Mama is in no way, shape or form making money from this, so don't sue her, please.

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Embryon Truths

By: Blackladycharon

Chapter One: The Leader of Lost Souls

Harry twisted, tangling himself in his sheets. His dreams, already uneasy this year, were disturbed even more after the Dementors had attacked him and his cousin. Surprisingly, Dudley had cornered him and growled rough thanks the day after. Apparently nearly dying had rendered the tub of lard willing to tolerate Harry's magic, even if he didn't like it. The nightmares Harry ran through were different this time. His own voice whispered and sang between the images that tormented him.

_- I know who you are-_

_He stared up, betrayed, into silver eyes that gave him a mocking, disdainful look. He'd failed. Both of them were lost to him._

_  
-The leader of lost souls-_

_The mute tilted his head to watch him, his silver gray hair ruffled slightly by the eternal rain and wind. They both held advantages, but he knelt and bowed, as others would to this one._

_  
-You can't kill me-_

"_Nothing's changed. We will go to Nirvana. That is his command."_

_  
-I'm immortal-_

"_I…died?"_

_  
-I'm not afraid to die-_

_Silver eyes stared up at him in horrified shock, betrayal written in them as it had once been written in his own. He couldn't believe he'd done it. Stabbed his leader. But Cuvier could be right. His leader could still be that monster. Could hurt him and her. Even if his heart died, he had to protect at least one of them._

_  
-My soul will travel on-_

"_I will follow you."_

_  
-You can't kill me-_

"_You all wish to go to the World again? You ask this of me?"_

"_Yes. Ze knows our nature, since two of us are Ze in a way. We… wish to remind the world." Ze smiles, Zir face as beautiful as ever. Ze is God, Zir word is Law after all._

"_Very well. Choose forms."_

_  
-I'm immortal-_

_He stares up at the serpentine face, hissing weakly. He has no strength, no way to protect himself. He knows he will fail, in this moment of death._

"_Avada Kedavra!"_

_The spell rebounds. Ze stands there, rage in Zir eyes as the beast escapes Zir righteous wrath._

"_You are not ready to return to me yet. Find them, and protect them. They are the power you need."_

Harry jerked upright, blurred eyes frantically scanning the room as if he'd still see the strange being standing before him. Even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see it clearly if it was still there. Half silver, half black hair, eyes that seemed to be black one moment, silver the next. Though the body, in its short black jumpsuit, seemed female, there was something that told you the creature was hermaphroditic. After his heart stopped racing, Harry put his glasses on, thinking. He could tell Dumbledore that he'd had some kind of disturbing vision. Yet, something within him balked at the idea. It was… sacred. He was sure of that. Brushing his hair out of his eyes, Harry leaned against the windowsill and contemplated his life.

"I know who you are, The leader of Lost Souls…" The song that he had sung in the dream came from his lips.

"I'm not afraid to die, My Soul will carry on…" Zir had told him, Harry found himself thinking. Zir had told him to find them. All of them. Harry didn't even know who he was looking for. Or who the strange God/Goddess was. Or how he even knew to refer to Zir as Zir. Harry sighed, wondering.

_Pray to Zir._

The thought came, clear as tears. Harry frowned. Pray to Zir? He didn't even know who to pray to. Shaking his head, Harry decided that it was merely nerves due to the trial that was coming up.

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Harry staggered out of the trial, a grin across his face. Mr. Weasley met him.

"Harry, Dumbledore didn't tell me…"

Cleared. Of all charges." Harry accepted Arthur Weasley's congratulations moving in a kind of daze. He was safe. He was still going to Hogwarts. He wouldn't have to go back to his Aunt and Uncle's yet. He felt a snarl try to twist his lips when he saw Lucius Malfoy talking to the Minister. While Fudge suddenly developed an overwhelming need to quiz Arthur on Muggle artifacts, Lucius cornered Harry, lowering his voice.

"Don't think that getting out of this is going to save you, Potter. The Dark Lord has plans for your death." Harry felt his lips peel back from his teeth, as he answered in a low, feral voice.

"He can try. Ze protects me. He has already incurred Zir wrath." The change in Lucius was sudden. His face drained of color, and he almost stumbled back. His eyes were enraged, but beneath that rage, Harry saw fear. He could almost taste it, sweet and coppery as blood. Malfoy appeared genuinely surprised, though he recovered his composure fast enough.

"Really, Potter, what do you think a dead God can do against the Dark Lord? The Seraph is a myth. And even if Ze" He spat the word as if it had a foul taste. "wasn't, the last remains of Zir" Again with the disgusted look. "Tribe were murdered by the Dark Lord Adama centuries ago. You pray in vain." Harry tilted his head, gazing right into Lucius's eyes. The blood again drained from the elder Malfoy's face. He stared into Harry's eyes as if he couldn't believe what he saw. Harry kept grinning, aware that it was more a warning then a pleasant expression.

"Where will you Run? Where will you Hide? I see the blood drip from your eyes…"

"Your eyes…" Lucius Malfoy seemed only half aware of the fact that Fudge and Arthur had stopped talking. "Demon eyes…" He straightened, almost knocking Harry away. "Minister, I believe we have business in your office." With that, Lucius strode away. Arthur looked over at Harry, who shrugged.

"What's got into him? Come on, I want to get back to Grimmauld Place and get something to eat."

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Lucius Malfoy slammed into his study, grabbing an ancient text. It was impossible that Potter knew that. The Seraph that the Embryon tribe had worshipped was a myth, a strange combination of male and female that the Dark Lord Adama had destroyed because its followers couldn't be swayed. They believed that their God spoke to them from Nirvana, and sent Zir soldiers to defend them. Adama had supposedly destroyed all but one of the soldiers, who had taken him down with his dying breath.

Finally he found the page he was looking for.

'The Seraph's Soldiers follow Zir faithfully, though they can be deceiving in their forms and natures. Rarely do they appear outside of the True and Trusted, but when they do, they do so in disguise. They follow their two commanders, The Leader of Lost Souls and The Cyber Shaman, who are believed to be direct incarnations of the two aspects of The Seraph. Within the Tribe, they appear as a silver haired and eyed boy and a black hair and eyes girl…' Lucius skimmed the rest of the description, coming down to the next paragraph.

'Directly below the Leader and the Shaman is the Lord of Fire. Within the Tribe he appears as a tall youth with scarlet hair and eyes, signifying his power over the element of Fire. Outside of the Tribe, his disguise is often that of a small youth with messy black hair and vibrant green eyes. The Lord of Fire is often the first of the Soldiers to wake, and his fierce loyalty to the Leader and the Shaman is flawed only by his obsessive need to protect both of them, even from each other. When threatened, or threatening an opponent, his eyes will return to their natural red shade, and his belligerence rises. Curiously, the Lord of Fire is also seen as a betrayer, having attacked the Leader in a few recorded instances to attempt to protect the Shaman, and vice versa…' The book fell from Lucius's hands. He sat in his chair, pouring himself a cognac with hands that shook. His mind flashed back to what had happened at the Ministry. To what he had seen when he looked in Potter's eyes.

"_Where will you Run? Where will you Hide? I see the blood drip from your eyes." Potter's face was even more frightening than Voldemort's in that moment, lips peeled back in a threat display, an almost mad, fevered look in his eyes. Eyes that no longer appeared green as grass, but a startling, searing red, the shade of fire dancing in the dark, or of fresh blood seen through tears. Ancient eyes that judged and measured and reveled in the thought of defeating his opponent in a bloody fight._

_Eyes that worshiped the Seraph, and the two that formed Zir._

_The Lord of Fire's eyes._

Lucius's eyes fell on the book. Embryon Truths, the ancient thing was named. Lucius poured himself another cognac, cursing. Damn Potter for making things worse. The boy couldn't die when he should have, and now he might belong to a God thought dead. A God that the wizarding world had viewed with great respect before Adama destroyed Zir's followers. If Potter was indeed one of Zir soldiers, backed by her power and granted his own through divine right, then the others had to be somewhere in the background. One soldier, wounded, exhausted, almost powerless, dying, and alone had taken Adama out. It had cost the soldier what was left of his existence, but from what the History books could tell, the soldier had considered it worth the price. If the entire group were to awaken and fight…

Unthinkable. Voldemort would lose.

Lucius stood, throwing his glass at a house elf as the cringing thing slunk away. He would have to inform his Lord of the change in the Potter boy at the next meeting. Surely something could be done to annihilate this threat before it became even worse.

-End Chap 1-

Well, what do you think so far?

Post Notes: On the 'Ze' and 'Zir'. I've seen them used in other Digital Devil Saga fanfics for Seraph, as its neither male nor female, or is both male and female, and it gets confusing and annoying to refer to Seraph as an 'it'. Also, if you're confused about what's going on, bear in mind that I've barely begun laying the structure for this out for everyone, and at the moment, neither Harry or Lucius have a good idea of what's going on. In fact, Harry really has no idea. Please read and review, tell me what you think.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's notes: Meh, not much to note here. Things are starting to pick up, and we get a few more ideas of what's going on here. Hopefully I'll be getting on an updating schedule soon, so the next chapter may carry a date for more.

Kalliope the Mewthree: Authoress-Mama doesn't own Harry Potter or Digital Devil Saga, they belong to J.K. Rowling and Atlus respectively. Authoress-Mama is in no way, shape or form making money from this, so don't sue her, please.

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Embryon Truths

By: BlackLadyCharon

Chapter two: The Lord of Fire

'_The Embryon divide themselves into two distinct groups within the Tribe. The Lokapala consider themselves as Guardians and rarely if ever display more than average skills in any one thing, even magic. In contrast, the Asura specialize with certain weapons and magics, giving them their varying titles. Also, most Asura bear a black marking somewhere upon their bodies, showing the beast supposedly bound to their very souls, that they have made compact with to defend themselves and the Tribe, though from what little I have deciphered from the Asura's cryptic comments the marks were once much more powerful, enabling not only the transformation into the beast but a halfway form, both powers long since sealed to protect the Asura from themselves and each other…' _--- Damien Mallory, Embryon Truths

Harry found himself packing his school things while Ron's mother talked of organizing a dinner that night, a thinly veiled celebration of the fact that Harry had gotten off scott free. He found himself staring at the mirror in the room, oversized shirt held in his hands, contemplating his reflection. Not much to his surprise, he found he didn't like who he saw. The boy in the mirror looked fragile and weak, clad in cast offs that made him appear worthless and shabby. Harry was struck with a sudden desire to change that. And then the post arrived.

"School books, looks like Dumbledore found someone to take the position of DADA teacher…" Ron's voice trailed off as the shiny badge fell out. Harry eyed it, realizing it was the Prefect's Badge, and found himself shaking his head.

"Hate to say this Ron, but better you than me. I'd lose my temper at some poor first year and completely shatter what little is left of my reputation…" About then, both Hermione and Molly Weasley came in, and the girl fest of squealing that Ron had made Prefect began. Harry waited until it had died down before following Mrs. Weasley out of the room.

"Mrs. Weasley, mind if I go with you to Diagon Alley? I want to get some new clothes, not just robes, but CLOTHES. I'm tired of wearing my cousin's cast offs." Mrs. Weasley seemed uneasy, but then she nodded.

"I guess you're right dear, we can't keep you cooped up in here without you going insane, and you do need something else to wear. The clothes really don't help with the rumors of your supposed mental instability." Harry smiled and followed her out the door. A day with some peace and quiet, finally.

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Harry had leisurely trailed through the shops that sold Muggle clothing in Diagon Alley, grabbing bits and pieces from varying places as they struck his interest, dropping his cast offs once he'd completed an outfit for the day. Dark gray jeans with orange patches sewn onto the knees, and dark black vest with red flames sewn onto it, and a deep red like fresh heartblood trenchcoat along with calf boots of sturdy gray leather was now his clothing. People, mainly girls but a few guys as well, stared, letting Harry know that the look was working. He no longer looked fragile and half mad, but confident and perhaps a tad dangerous. He ducked into the last Muggle clothing store on his list, humming under his breath.

To find himself nose to nose with Malfoy.

"Oh wonderful, if it isn't Barking Potty. Seeing Dark Lords again, Potty?" Something seemed to snap in Harry as he heard those words and that tone from Draco. A sense that something vital in his world was messed up. Recalling suddenly part of fourth year, Harry knew that even if Draco had gone to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts, they would have met. Harry would probably have done something, or maybe Draco would've, and they'd have ended up in the same school. No one challenged him like Draco did, except possibly Ginny, and that was entirely different. But he wasn't going to take it today.

"Oh, if it isn't the high Lord of Mud Slinging! Don't you ever know when to keep that viper's tongue of yours between your teeth, Malfoy? You slander those who work for a living, belittle them as if your sacred 'Pure Blood' makes you so much better. Then again, you're one of the lucky ones, you know which end of the wand is which. Maybe that means your family isn't as 'Pure' as you like to pretend?" He saw the barbs hit, saw those pale gray eyes flare, and continued to press. "How much did your Father pay in breeding fees for your Mommy, Draco? Maybe he got stiffed, got himself a breeder that found another mate…"

BAM! His head rocked back as Draco responded, not with magic, but with a good old fist to the face. Then his knee was between Draco's legs, slamming them both to the ground as they punched and kicked and scratched and snarled. Harry couldn't concentrate, couldn't THINK. There was a red haze and the feeling of fire and ice clashing and his fists hitting flesh and FUCK Malfoy had just bitten him where the neck met the shoulder but he was retaliating by clawing the blonde's back to ruins through a thin silk shirt and this was what he wanted/needed/LIVED for…

"Harry!" He snapped back to himself as Malfoy released his bite and jerked away, staring at Mrs. Weasley while his brain tried to place just where he was and what he had been doing. Then his eyes strayed to his own blood trailing from Malfoy's lips and Harry had to suppress the desire to lean in and clean it off with his tongue, until Malfoy started doing just that with a dazed and confused expression and Mrs. Weasley hauled him off shouting the whole way about indecent actions and what did he think he was doing and Merlin's beard had Malfoy actually bitten him did he know how many germs were in a human mouth…

He tuned her out a good long while before they got back to Grimmauld place.

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Severus Snape did not like to admit he had a propriety interest in Harry Potter's life.

Admittedly, he was the son of James Potter, who Severus absolutely hated, but then when he looked at the boy's eyes, all he could see was Lily. Lovely Lily, who he'd driven away with his own stupid, small thinking. If he'd kept his mouth shut, Harry might have been his son, he might have had more to his life then and endless atonement and watching Dumbledore subtly raise the boy as a sacrificial lamb. Oh, it was all with the best of intentions, but Severus knew the old saying about good intentions and the road to hell.

Still, he'd listened with concern when Molly had told him that Harry had gotten into a down right violent confrontation with Draco Malfoy. From some of her blushing and the way she'd tried not to describe the fight in to great detail from her own point of view, Severus concluded that it might not have looked much like a schoolboy fight and more like two dominants fighting to see who was going to end up on the bottom. Curious, since Draco was always exceptionally agitated over the summer when he couldn't follow the news about Harry, to the point of sending that demented House Elf to try to keep Harry safe from his Father during second year. The two seemed to be stuck in some place between enemies, rivals, and lovers that couldn't stand each others guts.

And now Potter was sneaking out of the party and heading upstairs early.

Severus disentangled himself and followed discretely, watching as Harry entered the room that Moody had confirmed housed a Boggart. The crazy brat went right to the drawer it was contained in, Alohamoraing the lock open and facing the Boggart as it came out. Severus prepared to start flinging his Patronus, regardly of circumstances. But it wasn't a Dementor that appeared.

A dead Ronald Weasley, his chest torn to ribbons and bone sticking out lay on the floor. Potter's face paled as he raised his wand.

"Ridiculous!" Crack! Hermione Granger raised pleading hands, her throat torn out and blood bubbling from her lips. Severus felt ill at the sight. Harry staggered back, stammering.

"R-Ridiculous!" Crack! Ginny Weasley, eyes gouged out, clothing torn in a way that suggested the ultimate violation, tongue bulging out, hand prints around her throat. Potter let out a low anguished cry.

"Ridiculous!" Crack! Draco standing there, covered in blood, a cold smile twisting his lips and a knife held by his own hand against his throat.

"You still don't understand. To study the body, you take it apart. To study the mind, you isolate it by crushing the heart. Just like I'm going to finish crushing yours." And he dragged the knife across his throat. Potter's wand fell from his hand as he dropped to his knees, half insensate as the Boggart Draco began walking towards Harry, knife held at the ready. Severus couldn't watch any more. He stepped forward, and the Boggart turned, Lily's face and eyes staring at him, Lily opening her mouth to accuse him…

"Ridiculous!" Voldemort appeared in a pink tutu with a cap of petunias growing on his head. Severus laughed loudly at the sight, forcing the Boggart to retreat back into the drawer as he relocked it, before turning to pick Harry up and take him towards the room Molly had assigned the boy. Potter stirred, looking up at Severus with dazed, pleading eyes.

"Don't tell, please don't tell. I'll do extra lessons, detentions sir. Not a peep of complaint, just please don't tell them…" Severus found himself gently shushing the boy, aware for the first time of how fragile the boy looked when something like this happened.

"Not a word, I promise. I won't tell them your fears…" A relieved sigh drifted from Potter's lips, and he was asleep by the time Severus laid him in his bed.

Severus prayed it would be a sleep without nightmares.

-End Chapter two-

Well, chapter two is at long last out. I've been playing the second game in the series for this, so I finally have a good idea of what I want to do with this. A little Draco/Harry interaction, and Harry torture too! Personally, though the Dementors work, I've always felt that Harry's greatest fear isn't fear itself, but the loss of those he loves or needs, which is what I've tried to show here.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: Meh, mildly bored, so I've decided to restart this. To those who end up waiting forever and a day for updates, I'm sorry I'm so inconsistent. My home life is almost always in a state of barely controlled chaos, and sometimes I just lose the will and the muse to write things. Bear with me, I do honestly want to finish many of the fics I start. Please review, I like knowing what people think, even if some of them are trolls.

Kalliope the Mewthree: Authoress-Mama doesn't own Harry Potter or Digital Devil Saga, they belong to J.K. Rowling and Atlus respectively. Authoress-Mama is in no way, shape or form making money from this, so don't sue her, please.

Embryon Truths

By: BlackLadyCharon

Chapter Three: The Lady of the Maelstrom, Churning Thoughts

'_We entered the tribal lands by midday, seeing none of the Asura or the Lokapala as we traveled, admiring the silent forests. Yet when we turned to the trail after a short rest, she was there, apprising us. Or I suppose to be more accurate, it was apprising us. Her (it is almost impossible to remember it is in fact both male and female, it gives so little sign of it) black hair was tied back in a ponytail, the white robe she wore displaying the jet Atma, called the Maelstrom, which rested prominently between her breasts. Then, with barely a flicker, she was gone again, leaving us shaken by our first encounter with the Asura known as Jenna of the Maelstrom.' _- Lukai Malfoy, A Traveler's Journey

She studied herself in the mirror, almost idly. Naked as she was, her eyes skimmed down the image in the mirror, dismissing most of the frame she watched, until she got to the scar. It wasn't even a very obvious one, faded so much as to be almost indistinguishable from the rest of her skin, but it was there, an annoyance in her life. Or how her life could have been. She poked at it frowning.

'_I identify female, always have, always will. Even if I had through some fluke been a fully functional one, my parents took that choice away from me. I am only a female now, not a combination. Why do I feel so…enraged at that thought?'_ She ceased to think about it, pulling clothes on and reaching for her book. There were still spells she wanted to study…

"Hermione! Dinner!" With a sigh, Hermione drew her hand back from the book and went downstairs.

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Hermione watched, perhaps better than she thought for no one commented on her watching the faces as much as listening to the words said. Sirius looked carefree and unconcerned, Lupin grave, Snape the faintest bit worried, and Harry looked about ready to drop dead. But Hermione's gaze strayed to Ron the most. He had that look, the one that drew her back to him no matter how stupid he acted normally. The cold, calm one that told her he was thinking and thinking hard, like he did at chess. Hermione had no illusions about their team dynamic, no matter what Snape might think. She was the back up and long range person, Harry the brutally obvious one who rushed in, distracted, and took the damage that neither she nor Ron were capable of surviving. And Ron…

Ron planned, and watched, and executed the maneuvers needed to keep them alive. But none of them led, not really. There was a sense of waiting, of looking for the one who would do so that irritated Hermione faintly. Until they had a leader, they were stumbling in circles, blind as demons. She frowned a little at that thought. She never knew why, even with all the contrary art and literature, but from a very young age she was convinced that true demons, at least high level ones, were blind. Blind to their sins, blind to the glory they strove to destroy. But what if a demon could work past its blindness, what would it be then? The answer came, whispered in a voice that sounded sweet and sad, and beloved.

_You are Asura._

Hermione's frown deepened a bit, but she quickly dismissed as she and Harry and Ron made their way back upstairs. True to Ron's prediction, Ginny was perched on her bed, eyes trained on the door until Hermione shut and locked it. There was something small and fragile about the redhead that night that worried Hermione. She would never admit it, not even to Harry or Ron, but she felt overprotective of Ginny, and that also unnerved her. Until Ron and Harry had saved her life, Hermione hadn't really had friends. There was school, studying and studying to be the best, until the letter came. The one that told her that the time her entire school swimming pool had become a swirling, churning whirlpool had a reason, the time that the popular girls had tossed her in and she'd come out perfectly dry was explainable, and the one that had freaked her and her parent's out the most, the time a great scaled head had risen out of the ocean to stare down at the little fishing boat they'd chartered for the day, then silently disappear back under wasn't a hallucination. She was magic, a witch who could be trained and taught.

So why, she wondered as she began answering Ginny's questions, did she always think that she was something more then that?

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Ron listened to Harry sleep, and turned thoughts over and over again in his mind. Harry was exhausted, Snape was being lenient by Snape standards to Harry recently. Harry had gotten even more overprotective recently. Ron wouldn't have thought it was actually possibly to make a Doxy 'goosh!' like that, but Harry had when the damned thing had nearly bitten Ginny. Not logical, not comprehendible. He found himself thinking that way about things more and more often. Until now, until the incident with the Goblet and Wood (and how could he not have known, not have understood instantly that Harry would never risk the safety of all of them that way? Harry would risk himself, yes, but only if the rewards benefited all of them, not just him.), he had been happy to confine thinking logically and precisely to the chess board, and to accept the surface. Harry led, Hermione knew things, he provided support.

Now he knew in his heart and head that it wasn't so.

They had no leader, and thus they were weakened. Ron knew it the way he knew things that shouldn't be in the head of a fifteen year old. The best way to smuggle an assassin into another's army, how to take a building guarded by Muggle weaponry with the least amount of casualties, how to disarm a man wielding a gun. How to make the boots he'd taken to wearing recently with the knives hidden in the toe, how to kick harshly and effectively and how to flex muscle so that he could easily use that kick to open a man taller than him's throat. How to lie with a straight face so that even Fred and George would believe him. It frightened him, the thoughts unfolding within him, because he could see what it was, even though it made no sense to him. Ron Weasley was a wizard, but somehow once, centuries ago, he'd been something more.

And that something was waking back up.

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Ginny Weasley knew she could fight, could kill, but that she didn't like to. She knew she could hold a man's head as she delicately cut the jugular and watch his life gush out of his eyes as the blood gushed out of the vein. But she didn't know why. She knew, somewhere in her, that she didn't really hate anyone, even Mr. Malfoy who'd put that trapped diary in her books, even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named who wanted to kill Harry. She knew that fate and karma and destiny were all different names for the same river, and that everyone arrived at the place they were going to by different routes, some of them longer and more convoluted than others. She knew that part of her duty was to help Harry and Ron and Hermione, but everyone seemed to think her too young, too in need of sheltering. In the back of her mind, Ginny Weasley knew the taste of human flesh and blood and sinew in her mouth.

She knew in the end, that all the body was was food for others, it was the soul and the Song that mattered, but she didn't ever think about that in the upper part of her mind.

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It drove Draco Malfoy to distraction watching Potter and the others stumble about in the dark and trip over each other and themselves. They achieved their goals more by blind luck then anything else, and then they were praised as if it were on purpose. It made him just want to quietly stare at them, then tilt his head and somehow get the entire point that they were being stupid and careless and risking themselves needlessly across in that one gesture. It also made him want to beat Potter's face against the wall until the other submitted and acknowledged that Draco could give him what he needed: a sense of direction.

Voldemort and his plans annoyed Draco, like Potter and his lemming habit of throwing himself head first into the fray. Whenever Draco did faintly start feeling that Voldemort might be right about it all, a screaming, terrifying feeling that if he went that way he would be fucking up majorly again rose in his chest until he had to politely excuse himself from any and all company to find a silenced room to just scream in. He also found himself quiet more often then not anymore, only resorting to verbal proddings around certain people. Potter in particular. When they had first met, at eleven and the future just starting to spread before them, Draco had wanted Potter to take his hand, to kneel and follow as a part of him knew he should and must.

He'd known even then that Potter wouldn't bow easily, and been perversely pleased when he'd been right.

His back burned with phantom pain from the healed gouges Potter had gifted him with, and Draco felt his tongue flick out across his lips as if Potter's blood might still linger there, dark and ambrosial and addictive as Dreamless Sleep. His mother had thrown a fit about him brawling in public like that, though Draco had kept his mouth shut about what Potter had said to set him off. Narcissa Dearest Mother would hex Potter's balls off for that, and Draco, for whatever insane reason the Gods had put in his mind, wanted them right where they were.

Potter would follow one day, and they would carve out Nirvana on Earth, safe from the monster who thought he could rule both of them.

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Harry thought of a masculine/feminine form, of eyes that say past and present and might have been and might yet be and will be all at once. He thought of the starving, ravening hunger of demons, of the salt of human tears, of blind and unknowing eyes. Of a girl, black on black and a song haunting as the wind on Lammas Night, of a man silver and silver who was silent amongst the damned and lost souls he led to her without hesitation. Of fire burning and purifying, of the need to protect so deeply embedded within him that he couldn't sleep easily any more. Of what the boggart had shown him. It was not fear, as it had been only two years ago, it was Loss. Loss of everything. Harry thought, and moved a little bit closer to parting the veil of illusion he had woven around himself. As he closed his eyes to sleep, he whispered the words in his head.

"Shan-ti, Shan-ti…"

Fire burned, even in his dreams.

-End Chapter three-

Well, this kind of kilted off into a character study in some ways, but I'm pleased with it. And if you've played Digital Devil Saga and can't figure out who Hermione and Ron are created from, shame, shame on you. Thoughts are starting to percolate once again, but right now, I think I'm going to go start a new DDS file and refresh the story in my little head.


End file.
